It’s all a bit crazy at Arsenal

I’m apprehensive about how Arsenal are going to perform during next season. This coming Saturday there should be huge anticipation about a brand new season, players will have had a good summer break and should be biting at the bit to win something this year to make up for the shortfalls and nearly successes of the recent past (which is far too painful to recall for now). Yet, it doesn’t feel like it.

Instead, we face the prospect of losing the creative spine of our midfield (if Chamakh is to believed) or they may stay (if Rosicky can be persuasive enough). Others players are supposed to be departing but they’re still being named in the team. And here lies the problem, where do we turn for concrete information? Whilst you have to admire Arsenals stance in not disclosing information on new signing until a signing has been completeed, the club recently admitted that they are powerless to prevent the media from creating various frenzies around speculative stories. I am pretty sure they could do a better job in confirming the pure conjecture to avoid confusion – at the time of this posting Arsenal have been linked with 155 potential signings this summer! I understand that Arsenals scouting network covers many parts of the global but surely if you were looking to bring new faces into the club you would focus on key targets and ensure that everything was completed and successful in the shortest time possible. I do feel that other clubs in Europe have been more successful that Arsenal in adopting this strategy.

Apparently this week we’re going to potentially see some new faces but I can’t help but feel that this means that we have not leveraged the pre-season friendlies and training enough to embed news players and styles for the start of a new season. In the past couple of seasons we have had pretty reasonable starts (relatively speaking) but this season the start is somewhat trickier. We start against Newcastle where the demons of last season second half capitulation need to be put to rest. This is then followed by the return of Liverpool who we are yet to beat at home in 3 seasons. And before the month of August is over there is another home match against a Premier League challenger, Man Utd and you can’t help but think that you cannot waiting for a new team to click when facing such teams.

So yes, it’s all a bit crazy at Arsenal at the moment, the recent changes in the boardroom; players publicly admitting that they have no desire to stay at the club (which hurts when you would like to think that the vast amounts of money would mean that they can actually play for pride rather than concerning themselves with how the household bills will be paid); a lack of conviction in the development and strategy of the team and the club. But today we live in a crazy world and whilst our civil society is crumbling around us its been quite reassuring to have one constant in life, the goings on of Arsenal FC and whether or not we might hear of that new glimpse of a headline that will give us fans the much-needed hope that our team will put in a credible title challenge this year. It keeps me going and I still keep the faith, that’s addiction for you!

Later on this week we’ll have a look the squad for this year even though it is bound to change despite some names being included in the Champions League squad. We can have a look at the strengths and weaknesses of certain positions but trying to nail down actually names to regular positions is currently as reliable at a Mystic Meg prediction.